#1 on the mosquito menu

Although there are many ways to categorize people, in the summer they pretty much come down to two types: 1) those whom mosquitoes couldn't care less about, and 2) me. 


I don't know what mosquitoes down through the ages of time survived on before I came along. Blood banks, maybe. But since I have been around, they seem to feed exclusively on me, taking a break now and then to sample my brother. He complains that his wife never gets bitten, even when they are side by side, and I make the same complaint about the Hero.


This of course has NOTHING to do with their reasons for marrying us, although it does seem to be one of the perks. Online dating sites might consider adding questions about one's propensity for mosquito attraction to member profiles. This could be an attractive feature to someone who is interested in finding such a person in order to achieve bite-immunity ("You'll never need Off again!"). But mosquito-attracting persons might want to forgo photos, as gazillions of red, swollen bites all over one's body is NOT considered an attractive feature.


According to scientists, mosquitoes are attracted to certain chemicals in the blood, which they can sense at great distances. I'm sure that if someone were to do scientific testing on the mosquitoes who have attacked me, they would find at least some that have come from other planets. Other galaxies, even. 


Or, like Harold Crick in the movie Stranger than Fiction, who discovers he is merely a character in a book someone is writing, I might in fact be a character in a terrifying Robin Cook medical thriller. Possibly the mosquitoes that are constantly harassing me have had their DNA altered in a secret experiment and will eventually pass along some horrible disease to me, such as turning into a politician. 


Scientists have, of course, developed repellents to keep mosquitoes away. These repellents include Charlie Sheen. But the only truly safe way to keep from being bitten, if you are a person who is always on the mosquito menu, is to stay inside when they are most active. This is roughly May through September.


You could move somewhere more inhospitable to the nasty buggers, but wherever that is, you probably wouldn't like it, either. Or, you could just move closer to me. You won't ever have to worry about mosquito bites again.